A human error at Google caused its main search engine to briefly identify every site on the web as a potentially malicious destination that represented a threat to end users, the company said.
Starting early Saturday morning California time, the world's largest search engine flagged each search result with the warning: "This …

not wrong - just ahead of their time

The power of "may".

Not "will" or "does" or "won't" or "cannot" - there's no such thing as certainty, especially where lawyers are concerned (as they wouldn't make any money then). So everything contains an element of doubt: "might", "may", "could".

So the statement that Google puts out; "This site may harm your computer" cannot be denied. Yes it's unhelpful, tells nothing about the degree of risk and merely increased the levels of doubt and paranoia, but wrong? No.

Personally, I'd like to see this sort of disclaimer on everything. Something along the lines of: "this product is not guaranteed safe under every circumstance", or maybe better: "you might die after handling this item". if it reduces the worth of all the (already worthless) warnings, caveats and disclaimers we see every day, then people might, just have to start thinking for themselves and apply what little common-sense they have to assessing the degree of risk, and whether it justifies the potential gain.

malware = google

Speaking of which

...did anyone else get one of those warnings along the lines that the Googeloïd Search Engine *might* have consented to give you one more result for your query (which was concerning a problem with a SATA drive, in case you were wondering) but *as* that page was listed in a the IWF blocking list, Googeloïd sadly *cannot* show the corresponding link in its search results (even though I am not even using Google from the UK). It then proceeds to give you a link to a vanilla protest page at chillingeffects.org.

Even G makes mistakes

I got growled at for saying "That's bollocks!" in earshot of a small child when searching for Wordpress themes earlier and getting everything listed as malware. Even G makes mistakes. The Big G is, of course, Jesus Christ himself, Ian Gillan. Until Google sings Child In Time like Ian Gillan then it will remain just G.

Spotted here too.

It was actually fixed while I was in the middle of typing my "Hey guys, your malware checker is borked" email to Google HQ.

I mean, I know that the Googloids are hellbent on taking over the entire world for their own nefarious purposes, but I didn't know that they had already developed mind-reading to that degree. It was a bit spooky from where I was sitting I can tell you!

Funnily enough, the following message was going to be the one to El Reg saying that Google was knackered. Oh well, late to the party as usual I suppose...

saw this when it happened

@Pete

'...or maybe better: "you might die after handling this item"...'

Technically, you could put 'you will die after handling this item'. If you handle it, you've survived long enough to handle it - and make no mistake, you WILL die at some point thereafter. So you'll definitely die after handling any item you handle.

screenshot and IE

It wasn't working in IE, i did take a screenshot of google saying that google wasn't safe for your computer. It will cause my joy for time to come. I also sent the an email to El Reg, this was about 10-15 minutes after it had started (i had to find the email address and take the screenshots)

I did notice that there was sometimes a server error, and once it said i was unauthorized to access that page. The really odd part was that under certain search conditions the sites showed up as fine, i believe it was with quotes but am not sure.

The most annoying part was not that it was indicating that all sites were harmful, it was that to get to the sites from google you would have to copy and paste. that and didn't have link for cached pages (why would they cache a potentially harmful website.)

Grabbing my coat, its the one in the back as I was here first, nothing more to see.

Did someone say Exec alert!

I for one am glad this has happened, the panic and chaos us on-call admins received during this 'outage' was funny to say the least, it's almost as if most peoples IT systems 'extend' off Google! How many times can you say 'its Google's problem, wait 30 minutes and try again.'

Well done Google for fixing it and blaming it on a very realistic issue.

,,,or are they so big and so complacent they test live by using us lot as the guinea pigs and just roll out the changes.

A couple of useful lessons here are that even the largest company makes mistakes and can be complacent or over confident. Roll on SAAS and the cloud - we're all doomed I tel you ! (Well not really, but all we're doing is placing our eggs in someone elses basket)

@Not the whole web

<Q>Google didn't mistake the whole web for malware - its adverts ^w sponsored links at the top of the search results were OK apparently. I didn't get a screenshot though.</Q>

So, if google had marked "all links unsafe" in this temporary (comedic) bug/feature. Then why were the adverts not also included?

Does this imply that the malware checks are not done on the adverts? If you pay Google enough, does this mean it will turn a blind eye to your Malware product? From previous El'Reg articles about "Free" Adobe Acrobat... I guess this is the case.

Donkeyporn.net

Entire web found to be harmful..

So happy...

that this happened on a weekend! I can't imagine explaining to our users that no, this isn't our fault and that no, I nor anyone else at tech support, can fix it. Particularly since the warning page bears a striking resemblance to some of the internal blocks' messages, and could easily be mistaken for one at a quick glance. OK, I can imagine it. It's not very nice.

God...

@Thomas Baker: It affected all browsers. It affected IE7 for me. Besides, it was a server side thing, so I doubt the browser would make much difference. And for everyone here whining about not getting 'credit', stop being such a pathetic attention whore. I noticed the issue, like a lot of the world, but I just ignored it and got on with my day and waiting for Google to sort it out. I didn't send it into a load of IT sites then came back looking to see if someone had mentioned my name. Do you REALLY think you're the only ones who noticed this issue and the only ones who sent in a tip. Get over yourselves.

Absolutely staggering.

The occurrence of phrases such as "internet down", "traffic down 93%" - the stock reaction seems to have been "google went down and we couldn't access the internet".

Google != the internet. They're a search engine - and that's all. It's testimony to the prominence of Google in people's thinking, that to lose Google is to lose the net.

Personally I use ask, not google - I don't like google - they can't be trusted. To have untrustworthy people appoint themselves as gatekeepers to human knowledge is foolish. That we stand around mutely while it happens, aware of their inherent untrustworthiness, says a lot about the people we have become.

To the people who thought that because Google went down they couldn't access the internet, please return your computers to the shop you bought them from and tell them you're too stupid to own one.